Department of Pediatrics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA.
Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU, Richmond, VA, USA.
Child Maltreat. 2024 Aug;29(3):500-507. doi: 10.1177/10775595241252350. Epub 2024 May 11.
It is not known how school closure affected child maltreatment. We conducted a retrospective cohort, linear mixed-models study of 133 counties (comprising 8,582,479 children) in Virginia between 2018 and 2021. Exposure was the opening of schools at least 2 days a week. Outcomes were referrals and incidence of child maltreatment reported to the Department of Social Services. In 2020-2021, there were descriptively more referrals (in-person: 50.9 per 10,000 [95% CI: 47.9, 54.0]; virtual: 45.8 per 10,000 [95% CI: 40.7, 50.9]) and incidence (in-person: 3.7 per 10,000 [95% CI: 3.3, 4.2]; virtual: 2.9 per 10,000 [95% CI: 2.3, 3.5]) of child maltreatment in counties with in-person schooling, though these differences did not reach statistical significance. The referral rate variations (between pandemic and pre-pandemic eras) of counties with in-person schooling was significantly greater than rate changes in counties with virtual schooling during the summer period. There were no differences in incidence in any quarter. Higher poverty within a county was associated with both higher referrals and incidence. Our findings suggest that child maltreatment is driven primarily by underlying differences in counties (namely, poverty) rather than the type of schooling children receive.
尚不清楚学校关闭如何影响儿童虐待。我们对弗吉尼亚州 2018 年至 2021 年间的 133 个县（包括 8582479 名儿童）进行了回顾性队列、线性混合模型研究。暴露是学校每周至少开放两天。结果是向社会服务部报告的转介和儿童虐待的发生率。在 2020-2021 年，描述性地有更多的转介（面对面：每 10000 人 50.9 [95%CI：47.9，54.0]；虚拟：每 10000 人 45.8 [95%CI：40.7，50.9]）和发生率（面对面：每 10000 人 3.7 [95%CI：3.3，4.2]；虚拟：每 10000 人 2.9 [95%CI：2.3，3.5]）在面对面学校教育的县中，儿童虐待，尽管这些差异没有达到统计学意义。面对面学校教育县的转介率变化（大流行前和大流行期间）明显大于虚拟学校教育县在夏季的变化率。在任何一个季度，发病率都没有差异。一个县内的贫困程度较高与转介率和发病率都较高有关。我们的研究结果表明，儿童虐待主要是由县一级（即贫困）的基本差异驱动的，而不是儿童接受的教育类型。
